711
submitted 10 months ago by sandro_linux@lemmy.ml to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

Or you can listen to U.S. Lt. Col. Alex Vershinin retired after 20 years of service, including eight years as an armor officer with four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and 12 years working as a modeling and simulations officer in NATO and U.S. Army concept development and experimentation. This included a tour with the U.S. Army Sustainment Battle Lab, where he led the experimentation scenario team.

https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/whats-ahead-war-ukraine

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

Anybody with a functioning brain can look back at what happened over the past year and a half and figure out which analysts actually have a clue.

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago

Exactly. That's why I'm so confused why you think everything is going as Russia intended.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago

Do elaborate on what it is you're confused by. Russian strategy has been destruction of Ukrainian army through attrition. Being a much bigger country with a big industrial base, this is the most sensible strategy for Russia.

Russia spent around 9 months making sophisticated layered defences over the past year while massively expanding the army. Ukraine was then forced to use human wave tactics to attack these defences by their western partners to try and show visible territory gains for continued support. This offensive failed miserably resulting in the loss of large portions of the equipment the west managed to cobble together, as well as trained and experienced soldiers. Russia actually ended up gaining more ground during this offensive than Ukraine did.

Now, Ukraine is out of weapons and manpower, and Russia is starting an offensive of their own having recruited over 300k new troops who have been trained and equipped during this time.

On the other hand, western powers are now admitting that they're not able to keep up with the rate of use ammunition, and Ukraine is now actively drafting women in to the military. Furthermore, many western economies are going into a recession, while Russian economy is showing growth and increase in military production.

On top of all that, we're now seeing the war in Palestine unfold which necessarily means that Ukraine will get even less support from the west.

Seems to me that this is precisely what U.S. Lt. Col. Alex Vershinin predicted would happen in his article that's linked above.

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

Russian strategy has been destruction of Ukrainian army through attrition.

Their strategy was a lightning fast toppling of the government within a week with little to no resistance, such as they saw in Crimea.

Russia is also facing dire manpower issues. With too much drafting from Moscow, Putin's power is in danger. In fact, Ukraine is betting on these manpower shortages to attrit down to the point where the line becomes untenable. See here: https://youtu.be/lebWSl49R0c https://youtu.be/CqmQPev1Gvg

Gasa is certainly an issue, but with higher artillery production, linked bills, and diverted media attention, it has upsides for Ukraine too. https://youtu.be/tg7aw3T3nzg

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago

Their strategy was a lightning fast toppling of the government within a week with little to no resistance, such as they saw in Crimea.

Nowhere has Russia said anything of the sort, but you must know something nobody else does apparently. Russia certainly did get Ukraine to negotiate early on, but the west forced Ukraine to break off these negotiations bringing us to where we are today.

Russia is also facing dire manpower issues.

It's absolutely incredible that people still believe this stuff after a year and a half of it being proven wrong. You must be one of those geniuses who thinks China's about to collapse as well.

Gasa is certainly an issue, but with higher artillery production, linked bills, and diverted media attention, it has upsides for Ukraine too.

It's incredible what people end up believing when they just guzzle propaganda on youtube.

In any case, there's absolutely no point arguing with you since it's pretty clear that you live in a fantasy world. By next year even people such as yourself will have to start grappling with what's happening in the real world though.

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

Russia said anything of the sort

You take their words at face value? It's from their actions and game theory of the situation. https://youtu.be/pBwT-5z9R5A

Did you watch the vid?

Did you watch the vid? It's a game theory and international relations teacher talking about their area of expertise. I'm guessing anything that disagrees with Russia though is propaganda for you.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

You take their words at face value? It’s from their actions and game theory of the situation.

They've stated their objectives pretty clearly. Why would I take words of some random youtube troll over the official position?

It’s a game theory and international relations teacher talking about their area of expertise. I’m guessing anything that disagrees with Russia though is propaganda for you.

The narrative this game theory and international relations teacher is feeding you is at odds with the reality we observe. The fact is that plenty of western experts such as Mearsheimer clearly explain what's happening, and their claims have actually been supported by what's observed https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukraine

Here's how things are actually going with now as reported by mainstream Spanish media https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-10-29/russia-halts-ukrainian-offensive-and-goes-on-the-attack.html

This is the real world as opposed to deranged fantasy wonderland you inhabit listening to your game theory and international relations teacher.

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago
[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago
[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

Indeed. Whether the attack is a good thing or a bad thing depends on the casualty and material ratio vs the objectives taken. Which a game theory approach is much better for analyzing than just saying that Russia or Ukraine is gaining ground.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

I never made the argument about gaining ground anywhere. What I said was that Russia's strategy is to grind down Ukrainian army through attrition. The game theory approach for analyzing this needs to account for the fact that Russia has a vastly larger population and massive industrial capacity that Russia inherited from USSR that the west is admitting is not able to match right now.

Also, every credible source such as BBC and Mediazona show that Russian casualties peaked before Ukrainian offensive started and have been falling since. On the other hand, Ukrainian casualties have been catastrophic even by western admissions.

Again, there is no point continuing this since clearly we aren't going to convince one another of anything. We will simply see who is right when the war ends.

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

I was taking about the article which seemed to be going off that.

Did you watch the vid?

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

Mearsheimer's article isn't talking about territory, and the article from the Spanish paper is talking about the fact that Ukrainian army is in an operational crisis right now. Did you actually read either one?

Did you watch the vid?

I watched part of it. Pretty much everything he says has been proven wrong since the video was made a year ago. The fact that you keep referring to the vid that made a bunch of wrong predictions is fascinating to me.

For example, Stoltenberg has publicly admitted now what the actual cause of the war was:

Then lastly on Sweden. First of all, it is historic that now Finland is member of the Alliance. And we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

He also flat out lies claiming that nazis in Ukraine don't have support of political power when nazis are literally in Ukrainian government military. Top Ukrainian officials including Zaluzhny have Bandera portraits in their offices. Azov nazi battalion is officially part of the military in Ukraine. Western media can't even find soldiers to interview who aren't covered in nazi tattoos and paraphernalia. The fact that he ignores all of that shows that he is an intellectually fraudulent individual.

He predicted that Ukraine capturing Crimea was a plausible outcome. We now know that it was not.

The idea that Russia was motivated by Ukrainian resources doesn't really stand to scrutiny either. Russia has massive untapped resources in the east, and it would be far easier to develop those than to go to war with NATO.

The reasoning he gives for the first strike advantage is directly contradicted by the quote from Stolenberg above. It makes it clear that Russia was in fact concerned about NATO expansion, and decided to take preemptive action to halt it after NATO refused to agree to stop expansion.

Once you bother reading the article I linked, you'll see that the whole 3-1 attacker advantage he talks about is not applicable in practice because both sides end up going on attack and defence. And as we just saw with the Ukrainian offensive disaster, attacks for Ukraine are far more costly due to lack of artillery numbers and air power.

He frames it as a territorial conflict, which again, as Stoltenberg explains, it is not.

The whole Kiev offensive narrative has been debunked many times already. The idea that Russia was trying to take Kiev with 100k troops is nonsensical given that they dedicated 40k troops to Mariupol which is a city that's an order of magnitude smaller. What the 100k troops were actually doing was pinning Ukrainian forces around Kiev while Russia consolidated their position in the east.

He claimed that sanctions would cause problems for Russian economy. Yet, the exact opposite is the case. European economies are in a crisis while Russian economy is growing faster than anyone expected.

Pretty much every single argument he's made was shown to be false. If you're still basing your understanding of the war on a deeply flawed analysis from a year ago, I can see why you have such a skewed understanding of what's happening.

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

I was more talking about the manpower video since that was more applicable to the article.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

The manpower situation favors Russia in every way. First of all, 80% of the casualties come from artillery fire and Russia fires around ten times more artillery than Ukraine. This means that Ukraine is taking far more casualties than Russia in this war. This is reflected in Ukraine now having expanded its conscription to older men and even women. This wouldn't be needed if Ukraine wasn't running out of manpower. On the other hand, Russia isn't doing conscription or mobilization right now, and they raised around 300k volunteers over the past year.

Russian casualties corroborated by publicly available data as of 20 October stand at 34,857. We can also see how the casualties are steadily dropping since March

On the other hand, even western media admits that Ukrainian casualties stand at over 100k now. Again, given that Russia has a much bigger population, it's pretty clear that this is a catastrophic situation for Ukraine. It's also important to keep in mind that the trained and motivated troops Ukraine loses cannot be easily replaced. You can't just throw somebody into training for a few weeks and expect them to be an effective fighting force that's going to take on a seasoned and experienced army.

[-] bazookabill@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

300k volunteers

made my day 🤡

by publicly available data

"publicly" doesn´t mean reliable, especially if it comes from "official" sources on either side.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago

made my day 🤡

Even western media openly admits this, but you keep on coping there buddy. The only clown here is the one who thinks that a country with a population of over 140 million couldn't recruit 300k people into military service. You know the same way people in US "volunteer" into military service because they don't have any better options in life.

“publicly” doesn´t mean reliable, especially if it comes from “official” sources on either side.

Certainly more reliable than some dufus on youtube pulling numbers out of his ass. Anybody who is not a certified clown understands that.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

also, highly encourage you to watch this 25 min video explaining the state of things by one of the most preeminent experts on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62FCVJycwSA

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=62FCVJycwSA

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/pBwT-5z9R5A

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/lebWSl49R0c

https://piped.video/CqmQPev1Gvg

https://piped.video/tg7aw3T3nzg

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/@Gametheory101

https://piped.video/@PerunAU

https://piped.video/@RFU

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
711 points (100.0% liked)

World News

32083 readers
741 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS